The ‘Sherry’ 50th Celebration Continues: Who Is Sid Bass?
September 15th, 2012If you look closely on the “Sherry” 45 we posted earlier today, you’ll notice that it states, “Arr. & Cond. by Sid Bass.” Does anyone know anything about Sid Bass and why he was chosen to arrange and conduct this amazing chart-topper? Is he another musical genius?
It wasn’t all that easy to find the Sid Bass story. Other than a brief mention in Wikipedia and a variety of music sites, there were some other tidbits about his career on the SpaceAgePop.com website: Sid Bass (January 22, 1913 – June 19, 1993) was a songwriter and orchestra leader. He was born in New York City and attended New York University.
After working for Muzak, he was hired as a staff composer by RCA. While with RCA, he recorded a number of pre-stereo, hi-fi showcase music albums for RCA’s budget label, “Vik.” One highlight of Bass’ work was his orchestration of Gale Garnett’s 1964 hit album “My Kind Of Folk Songs”. Working alongside producer Andy Wiswell, Bass’ efforts also yielded Gale’s Top 5 hit “We’ll Sing In The Sunshine” (which she also wrote) that same year.
So, how did Sid Bass end up arranging and conducting for the “Sherry” single, in addition to the “Sherry and 11 Others” album and the Seasons’ Christmas album?
Okay, we were curious, so we did some more digging and discovered the following scoop on the Four Seasons Chameleon fan blog: Looks like back in the late 1950s, Charles Calello belonged to a group called “The Victorians.” Calello left this group to work with Frankie Valli and the post-Four Lovers’ group that would eventually become The Four Seasons. As a matter of fact, after Calello started working with the Seasons and Crewe in 1959, he wasn’t making the money he wanted and felt that his group needed to go on tour, so he left the pre-Four Seasons for awhile to go on tour during 1961 before “Sherry” was recorded and released. That is how Sid Bass ended up doing the arrangements on some early Seasons’ tracks and the Christmas album, too. Frankie and the guys thought that Sid was too old fashioned for their style so they begged Calello to come back. He arrived in time to arrange “Walk Like A Man.”
Does anyone have any more details on Mr. Sid Bass and his association with The Four Seasons?
I’ve always wondered just how “instrumental” Sid’s arrangements were to the early Seasons. There didn’t seem to be much orchestra type arrangements to the real early stuff, except for the Christmas LP.
I think the early rock groups in the 60′s found arrangements like Sid’s to be a little old in style and newer jazz session musicians were used eventually for a “hipper” sound.
I think that his most often played arrangement is the “Here Come The Yankees” theme song that preceeds every radio broadcast of their games.
Comment by Ray — September 19, 2012 @ 8:28 am
you can probably find out more information about sid bass through his son Eric, who runs sandglass theater in putney vermont
Comment by someone — June 7, 2014 @ 9:25 pm
Sid was my uncle and his son Eric was at the recording studio with Frankie Valli -you can get in touch with Eric through Sandglass theater
to learn more.
Interesting how the past comes foward and songs become hits again
Comment by jane grusby — July 3, 2014 @ 3:48 pm